I find myself thinking about sports metaphors today. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the Steelers are playing their first pre-season game tonight. Or perhaps it has to do with the fact that my morning devotions revolved around Second Timothy 2—a portion of Scripture that illuminates the urgency of endurance, which is a subject that always generates athletic imagery in my mind.
When I was in middle and high school, the rhythm of my year was dictated by scholastic sports. From August until November, I played on the school football team. From November until March, I wrestled on the School’s wrestling team. From March until June, I ran track.
In high school, I played football at about 185-190 pounds. I would lose about 10 pounds throughout the football season. Then, when wrestling season began, I would lose another 15 pounds in order to be able to wrestle at the 167 pound weight class. (My dream, by the way, was to be a 6′4″, 250 pound linebacker at Penn State. When I was still 5′10″ and wrestling at 167 pounds in my senior year of high school, the dream began to dissipate!)
During wrestling season, losing weight was never all that difficult for me because of my larger frame. But the lighter wrestlers often struggled with their weight loss, simply because they didn’t have as much body mass with which to work. Our 118 pound wrestler, for example, always found it difficult to make weight. One day, during the weigh-in before a match, he was a pound and a quarter over his weight. The referee gave him forty-five minutes to shed his “excess baggage.” So, the 118-pounder put on a sweat suit (plus an extra sweatshirt), turned on all the showers in the locker room to their hottest temperature (thereby making the locker room into a steam room), and proceeded to jump rope in the locker room for twenty-five minutes. He lost a pound and a half of water, made his weight, and was given permission to wrestle in that night’s match. By the middle of his individual match, however, he found himself completely depleted of his energy. He wrestled well during the first period. But, by the middle of the second period, it was all that he could do brace himself on the mat so as not to get pinned. He couldn’t even initiate a move by the middle of the third period. At that point a teammate of mine who was sitting beside me leaned over to me and said this about our 118-pounder: “He might have made his weight today, but he sacrificed his endurance in the process.”
Cardiovascular and muscular endurance are essential in most sports. They cannot be sacrificed if the athlete hopes to perform well. In much the same way, according to Second Timothy 2, spiritual endurance cannot be sacrificed if our discipleship to Jesus Christ is to be something durable and authentic.
The Apostle Paul puts it this way: “I endure all things for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus…If we endure, we will also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:10-12). What is discipleship according to Scripture? Well, it is many different things. But, as this scripture makes clear, discipleship is, among other things, a test of our endurance. It is not a test designed to cause us to stumble or fail. But it is a test designed to produce faithful and enduring disciples of Jesus Christ whose lives foreshadow the eternity that they will spend with him.
The Greek word for endurance in this moment of scripture is a word that calls to mind a refusal to flee when circumstances become difficult and an eagerness to abide with the One we have chosen to follow. That kind of endurance, says the Apostle Paul to his dear friend Timothy, is part of the very essence of a durable and authentic discipleship.
I find myself personally and deeply convicted by this scripture. It is a scripture that brings me to my knees and compels me to acknowledge that, all too often, I settle for spiritual sprints instead of spiritual endurance. I settle for the quick emotional high produced a special worship service or a particular church program or an inspiring concert while avoiding the kind of consistent daily prayer and spiritual training that produces the kind of endurance that Scripture describes. Far too frequently, I allow my discipleship to be reduced to a spiritual sprint through an order of worship or a list of pastoral duties instead of looking upon my discipleship as a marathon that encompasses the entirety of my life.
Perhaps some of you are familiar with that condition—the condition of settling for short and infrequent spiritual sprints instead of a lasting spiritual endurance.
Oh yeah, I’m all too familiar with spiritual sprints instead of spirtual endurance. Thank you for the reminder, Eric… it’s not a race, it’s a journey and one that needs to be cultivated in the spirtual disciplines. I’ve been so caught up in the pain and frustration from my surgery that I have lost sight of those disciplines. I think it’s time to stop sprinting and walk, smell the roses, and concentrate on the long journey. Afterall, we are walking ‘the long way home.’
Ahhh…the whole crisis vs. process thing re: sanctification. You’re right…I think.
Charlotte…right on.
Keith…Yeah. But I certainly don’t mean to reduce the conversation to an either/or in terms of sanctification. There are moments when we have to sprint (i.e., accommodate crisis). But, too often, sprinting and crisis are the ONLY modes in which I live, meaning that I frequently ignore the longer process of working out my salvation with fear and trembling.